Salt

Salt is a Spy-Fi thriller so delightfully bad you can fly a 747 through its plot holes. As a bonus, the wonderful Andre Braugher is completely wasted in a cameo (as Secretary of Defense) so brief you’ll miss it if you blink. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a covert CIA operative. Released from imprisonment in North Korea, she returns home to her husband, German arachnologist Mike Krause (August Diehl). When a mysterious cancer-stricken, Russian defector, Oleg Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) is brought in for questioning, he fingers Salt as a sleeper agent of the former KGB. Her mission, he explains, is to assassinate the Russian president in a plot that will set a global war in motion.

At that moment, all logic escapes Salt, the person and the movie.  In an elevator, Orlov manages to escape this supposedly secure facility. While Agents Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) are distracted, Salt does the one thing that will seal her guilt: She attempts to escape.  There are security cameras everywhere in the aforementioned, extremely secured CIA facility—except in the exact locations that might help them track what Salt is up to.  From here ensues a physics-defying chase in which she jumps from one semi trailer to another without any apparent momentum—she would otherwise roll right off. Her capture is, of course, only temporary. Sure, she’s a super secret agent with extraordinary physical stamina and agility, but if things like gravity still function within the confines of the story then so too should inertia. Her vehicle crashes at high speed, brought to an abrupt stop. Salt’s hair might still look beautiful but her internal organs would be beaten to a pulp.

The question hangs out there as to whether Salt is a double-agent or not. And while the film’s approach to that question is interesting, the story invites some gaping plot holes. The premise involves Orlov’s training of orphaned children to become sleeper agents to be activated more than twenty years later. No thought is given to the lack of sense in such a plot, the most glaring problem being the unpredictable, ever-changing world. By the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed under the strain of its own military expenditures and poor economic infrastructure, why would the Russian president’s assassination plunge us suddenly into nuclear war? Doesn’t the American President realize the apocalyptic consequences of participating in a retaliatory strike? The plot itself makes no sense: Once the Presidents of Russia and America learn of the deception to pit both sides against one another, don’t you think they’d hold off from blowing the planet to oblivion? There are so many moving parts in a plot spanning several decades that any assurances seem next to impossible.  And if every other person in this movie is a sleeper agent, why stop at Salt?  The clandestine plan is so ludicrous they might as well have programmed a sleeper to grow up to be the President of the United States so he can off himself.  It certainly would be much simpler, guarantee success and be no less absurd than anything else going on in this movie.

The problem isn’t that the film should be more serious. But the PR machine went to such great lengths to portray the so-called “Day X” plan to destroy America as a real threat. The studio certainly is marketing this as a serious thriller, and not so much an action/comedy like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Granted, audiences may find it entertaining regardless.  However, if you’re going to be preposterous then why not go all out as in the case of True Lies or Rush Hour?  At the risk of sounding like Gene Shalit, I’m forced to conclude this turkey sandwich is all salt and no pepper.

Salt • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 • Running Time: 100 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action. • Distributed by Columbia Pictures

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